


You Are Organic, To Be Sure

by Nidor_and_Petrichor



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Descriptions of Bodily Harm, M/M, Please Forgive Me For It Has Been Years Since Physiology Class, The Desert Bluffs Marching Band Sucks, Why Are There So Many Dead Interns?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:04:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nidor_and_Petrichor/pseuds/Nidor_and_Petrichor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are both just perfectly imperfect bodies housing perfectly imperfect beings, made of simple pieces but holding complex ideas and feelings.</p>
<p>Or, Five Things Carlos and Cecil Are Made Of: Bone, Blood, Skin, Muscle and Autonomic Nervous Systems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Are Organic, To Be Sure

**I. Bone**

When Carlos first arrives in this new, ancient town, he is the consummate professional: he shakes hands and holds town meetings. He approaches his studies with extreme sincerity, and diligently reports his findings to the local authorities and news professionals. He does not smile, and he does not joke. This is a research opportunity, after all – a job. A round-the-clock, 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week job. He is embedded here, which means learning about and documenting everything, at all times. He is serious man, both about his work and his leisure, but there is far too much work to be done in Night Vale to allow much time for anything else. 

It doesn't take long to find out that this job takes _itself_ so seriously that it requires even more that he ever thought possible, more of himself as well as of physics. Between the occasional cancellation or elimination of days and the viscously slow passage of time, it turns out that scientific inquiry has become a 32.73-hours-a-day, 6-days-a-week job. While it may seem a trivial or semantic difference, those extra 1,703 minutes-per-week begin to take their toll and his solemn facade begins to crack.

*

Tall, dark and handsome, he's been called, more than once. The first two are quantifiably accurate with regard to American averages, but the last is a subjective judgement, unprovable and therefore useless as a descriptor. Teeth like a military cemetery, the voice on the radio says. As a simile it is inherently imprecise and, consequently, harder to argue with. It's poetic and flowery, but conjures up oddly appropriate imagery of stark white, precision alignment, of sorrow and suffering.

He remembers the constant ache of braces, as jaw and gums rebelled against the trauma of bone fragments shifting inside of them, of his body being rearranged from within. He remembers being twelve, of being the new kid, of not being able to eat anything denser than soup for the first two weeks. He remembers sitting alone, in too much pain to want to open his mouth to speak to anybody.

If only the radio announcer knew how many years of expanders and retainers and dental visits had gone in to perfecting those teeth, perhaps he wouldn't be so impressed with them. Or, perhaps he would be: they were a symbol of survival over suffering. That, he was beginning to guess, was something this town could relate to.

*

Cecil has seen him speak, has seen him eat, has seen him grimace in fear. He has seen those beautiful and perfect teeth many times. The first time he saw them, in fact, was the moment he fell in love with this attractive stranger.

He has seen Carlos smile since then, of course, but it has been polite and professional, exceedingly formal and closed-off. It is simply not, he thinks, the same. For eight months Carlos has lived in Night Vale and for eight months Cecil has been attempting to replicate that first heart-stopping grin, to no avail.

He is unprepared for the smile, when it finally comes. For the way the delicate skin stretches and folds around Carlos' perfect cheekbones, the way it dimples on only one side, the way it softens Carlos' eyes. The way his own stomach seems to float and twist, like the station cat batting after the spiders who spin dusty webs across the cloth-covered bathroom mirror.

He could count each of those perfect teeth, if only he could remember elementary mathematics at a time like this.

Carlos' lips fall gently closed, but the vestiges of the smile still linger in the corners of his face.

 

 

**II. Blood**

The first pricks of microscopic munitions had left him startled but standing, looking around for the source of the stinging. It was then that something larger – and more explosive – made contact with the back of his left knee. His leg buckled beneath him, throwing him off balance and sending him staggering against the wall of that strange cavern. He groped for a handhold to support himself, but the walls were smooth and worn, with no place to grip, and he was too deep to reach the unnatural place where rock transitioned to polished and waxed flooring. 

Another onslaught of projectiles turned his attention back to the tiny attackers. Something sharp and sudden and horrifically painful connected with his ankle, his legs gave out completely this time. He fell to his knees, the trajectory of the attacks now able to catch him fully in the arms, the neck, the face, the chest.

He felt a fire high against his side, like a swarm of hornets burrowing into the soft flesh, working deeper as he gasped and twisted in surprise. There was a moment of relief before a muffled hiss, a searing pain and the smell of charred flesh wafting up from within his own body. It must have been something explosive-tipped, the still-rational part of his mind mused, doing its best to hold back the black threatening to overwhelm his vision. Hot, wet blood mingled with the dusty ground as he fell to meet it, arms flopping uselessly at his sides, making no attempt break his fall.

*

By his later judgement, that fall leveled at least two city blocks, crushing houses, stores, and something extremely pointy that had probably once been a house of worship. The devastation to the miniature city was, he was certain, catastrophic, but he hadn't fared much better, and had no plans to shed tears about his own inadvertent devastation.

*

When he came to, he was laying behind the bowling alley snack bar, blood-soaked shirt cut off and replaced with a crosshatching of bandages and a smattering of strange sigils that appeared to be written on his skin in spicy mustard. The majority of his left side had already begun to bloom into a single, massive bruise where blood – freed from its vessels but unable to escape the skin – was pooling just below the surface.

He struggled to a sitting position, aided by a few helpful Fun Complex patrons, and peeled back one of the gauze pads to look beneath. There was no trace of metal or other material left: whatever he had been hit with, bullets or cannonballs or spears or whatever, had already been extracted, leaving only their extensive damage as evidence.

Teddy Williams, small business proprietor and medical professional, shouted at him to stop poking at his wounds and leave them be. “And you'd best not wipe those mustard signs off for at least three hours, or you're just begging for an infection,” he said as Carlos shakily got to his feet, left ankle stubbornly refusing to bear its full share of his weight. “You notice any oozing, discoloration or signs of unexpected limb growth and you come right to me to have it checked out, you hear?”

“Does somebody have my phone?” Carlos asked, focused not so much on the people around him as the muffled voice coming in over the tinny radio next to the register.

A hand pressed it into his and, after he'd sent a single, short text, he seemed to regain awareness of his surroundings. “Um. And does anybody have an extra shirt I can borrow?”

*

What had he been thinking, jumping into the tiny, hostile city under the pin retrieval area of lane five? What had he been thinking, insisting that Cecil meet him in the middle of a parking lot late at night? Stubbornness was the blame for most of it, he was certain; it usually was. Perhaps he could beg his way out of this, blame the text message on blood loss, or concussion instead of... instead of what? He knew what he was doing, but he couldn't say why, exactly, and that made the scientific part of his brain itch in discomfort.

But that didn't change the fact that he was still here, sitting on the trunk of his Prius, waiting for a strange and confusing and frustrating and fascinating man to meet him behind a fast food drive-through.

When Cecil did arrive, there wasn't a single word about the black eye, or the dried blood under his ear, or the rusty dirt under his fingernails. Cecil just looked at him, in all his damaged glory, and was happy to be with him for a time, under the blinking lights.

 

 

**III. Skin**  

Their first date wasn't until several weeks after Carlos' near death experience. He needed time to heal. And to second-guess. And to have several moments of existential panic based both around his love life and his own unlikely-but-continued existence. Cecil was nothing if not patient, and while he was willing to give Carlos as much time as he needed, he was also not about to let him back out of the promise of a date.

They'd gone on a walk after dinner, an invisible force seeming to draw their shoulders into one another as they moved. Carlos couldn't be certain whether it was a literal attraction – one of the localized gravity fields that sometimes cropped up – or the inevitable inward movement of two bodies after sunset. Their knuckles brushed, and again, and a third time. And it was so easy for Carlos to turn his wrist, just a fraction, just enough to bring their fingers together, their hands tangling, seemingly of their own volition, concentrated points of contact hanging loose and comfortable between them. 

*

Carlos would forever refuse to dwell on what string of panic and damnable curiosity led to tree examination that evening. Scientifically, the experiments were a bust: it was hard to remember much about botany or even proper testing procedure with Cecil finding ways to crowd close against him, standing just over one shoulder, breathing warm and heavy against Carlos' neck as he watched, full of gleeful curiosity.

Assuming that it would be bad form to kiss a man senseless against a possibly-sentient tree on the first date, Carlos asked if Cecil would collect some bark samples from the other side of the trunk, buying a moment to compose himself. He was just beginning to sort the samples into bags – conveniently stashed in his lab coat pocket for just such purposes – when he felt the ghost of fingers across his cheek.

By the time he'd rebooted his brain, the moment had passed and Cecil had gone back to coaxing timid leaves into his outstretched palm.

*

It began as lunchtime coffee. Which turned into a movie. Which was followed by dinner, which rolled neatly through to dessert, which led to a lingering pause outside of Cecil's apartment building. Which, naturally, became an invitation upstairs for a drink. Out of politeness, of course. A nightcap. Start with coffee, end with brandy, very tidy, bookends to the day, that's all.

They managed to play out the fiction long enough to begin sipping their Armagnac, side-by-side on Cecil's couch, thighs just barely pressing against one another

“I like this,” Carlos said, nodding along gently with whatever music Cecil had put on in the background while he'd poured drinks. “Did you play this on your show recently? It sounds familiar.”

“Yes, last Tuesday,” Cecil replied, turning slightly as he answered, using the movement to casually drop his arm across the top of the couch. “That's very observant of you.”

“It's part of being a scientist,” Carlos said, leaning in to bring them flush together from knees to hips.

Cecil let his hand fall gently across the back of Carlos' shoulder, the flannel shirt soft and warm beneath his palm. “What else is part of being a scientist? Other than self-reliance, of course.”

“Oh, you know. Things like–” Cool fingers brushed just above his shirt collar, stirring the hairs at the back of his neck. His head titled forward a fraction, involuntarily, and felt the touch shift accordingly. “–uh, data collection–”

“Mmhmm,” Cecil hummed, fingers beginning to wander, leaving goosebumps in their wake. “Go on.”

Carlos leaned forward, away from the touch, something inside of him contracting uncomfortably at the loss of contact. He set his nearly-full glass down on the table, and took Cecil's to do the same, before sitting back, still closer.

“Well, um, a good scientist makes and tests hypotheses,” Saying it felt ridiculous, but judging by the way Cecil takes the opportunity to work his hands through Carlos' thick, dark hair, neither of them is terribly concerned about what words are actually being spoken at the moment.

The awkward possible-innuendo of the conversation is cut short. They meet in the middle, Carlos leaning in just as Cecil pulls him closer, both of them suddenly desperate to fit their hands and mouths and bodies against each other in every way possible. They fumble wildly – eager, sloppy, half-formed kisses on faces and throats – before finding an equilibrium of giving and taking.

They slip further down the smooth leather of the couch and Carlos sprawls across Cecil, pulled into place by the front of his shirt. He manages to catch himself on his elbows, one on either side of Cecil's head, but one foot still trails on the floor and his body is off-balance, falling heavy against the man below him. They both groan and arch into it, Cecil taking advantage of the angle to mouth at his neck and begin frantically unbuttoning his flannel. It only takes a moment to finish, and Carlos pushes himself back to sitting, straddling Cecil's lap. He can't resist twisting a bit as he does so, under guise of struggling to remove the sleeves.

The t-shirt he's left wearing underneath is thin from washing, a relic from some mostly-forgotten event in his undergraduate years, and the static of the flannel has given it the beautiful fate of clinging to every movement he makes. He's barely freed his wrists from his overshirt before Cecil is grabbing at him, stroking his thighs, pulling his hips, deft fingers diving – suddenly – up under his shirt and across his stomach.

“Whoa!” Carlos grabs at Cecil's hands, startled.

The man below him looks equally shocked, eyes wide. His arms go suddenly slack, willing to withdraw, but Carlos maintains his grip.

“Cecil,” he knows just saying the name will buy him a moment to think. “Cecil–”

“Wonderful, beautiful Carlos, if you don't want–”

“No! No, I do! Look, I should probably warn you first is all....”

Though still flushed and panting, Carlos can tell from where he's sitting that Cecil's erection is flagging slightly. _Just perfect_ , he thinks. _That's me: Perfect Carlos, five minutes in and already killing the mood_.

He gently lowers Cecil's hands, stroking his thumb across the back of them, “Remember what happened at the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex?”

_Oh, yep,_ definitely _a boner-killer there. Awesome._

Carlos looks down before continuing. He'd started wearing long sleeves everywhere, usually his lab coat, to cover the damage done by both the army and the miniature town itself. With his flannel off, he can already see the evidence of that night deeply scattered across his arms.

“I'm fine now, of course, but the weaponry they used – it really is amazing, you know, anthropologically speaking, the combinations of ancient siege warfare and modern explosi–” he paused. “Right. Um, anyway. You should probably just be warned that, well, the results aren't exactly... pretty.”

Without giving himself too much more time to consider it, he pulls his shirt off and waits for a reaction.

His dark skin is broken up with patches of darker hair, across his chest and trailing low on his stomach. It is broken up, too, with innumerable scars.

They're denser and even more noticeable here than on his arms: constellations of tiny bullet-pocks, packed in clusters of shiny, freshly-healed skin; an angry softball-sized pucker dominates one side of his ribcage, still dusty-pink and fresh; long raking scratches and punctures span the length of his torso. There are a old scars, too – a thin, precise line across his side from a long-ago surgery, and a barely-visible cigarette burn on his hip, a souvenir from a concert attended in his teenage years.

He watches Cecil's eyes as they take it all in, all that evidence of mistakes and poor decisions he can never get rid of.

Cecil raises his hands and pauses, silently seeking permission to touch. Carlos nods.

Cecil is gentle at first, uncertain of how to proceed, fingers almost ticklish in their fluttering. It is when he looks up and sees Carlos' expression, concerned and vulnerable, that he throws caution to the wind. He latches onto the other man, kissing him until his lungs are empty, hands finding their own unconscious pathways, skimming across chest and sides and back, across arms and stomach.

Later on he will give some of the scars affectionate nicknames – like the one that vaguely resembles the grumpy man on the billboard for foot insurance, or the cluster that Carlos insists looks like Coma Berenices – but tonight he doesn't bother singling out any one part for extra attention. Any piece of Carlos is as perfect and beautiful as any other, and every inch of skin unique and amazing just for existing on this perfect, beautiful, unique, amazing man who has, despite all odds, continued, himself, to exist.

 

 

**IV. Muscle**

Cecil is neither thin nor fat, neither fit nor out of shape. He is precisely the right size, shape and mass to fill the amount of space he displaces, which is precisely as it should be. And so it is surprising to Carlos when he notices, several months into their relationship, that his boyfriend seems to be slowly bulking up, the muscles in Cecil's arms, chest and back slowly become more well-defined.

Carlos assumes that it is a natural side-effect of knowing there is somebody who will see and appreciate the change. And, since Carlos is a man of action, he makes his appreciation known through heated touches and wordless sounds, and does not ask about it further.

*

Carlos had just finished shaving and dressing for dinner when the call comes. Cecil is only just now leaving the station, he says. Can they reschedule for tomorrow instead? Would he mind terribly if they canceled?

Come hell, high water, or buzzing shadow figures – all of which have they have encountered at one point or another – nothing, _nothing_ can keep Cecil from enjoying an evening out. The alarm bells immediately sound in Carlos' mind.

“Is everything okay?” he asks, already pulling on his shoes.

“Oh, yes, my beautiful, concerned Carlos,” comes the reply. “I'm just tired.”

“Would it be alright if I maybe come over? Just for a little bit, to see you. I can pick up Chinese on the way, if you'd like.”

“That...” he sounds uncertain. “Yes, that would be lovely.”

“Alright,” Carlos says, grabbing his car keys. “I'll be there soon.”

*

He arrives at Cecil's apartment a half-hour later, food in hand, but there is no response to his knock. He tries once more before fishing his spare key out and unlocking the door himself. The sun has just finished setting and there are no lights inside, other than the soft luminescent glow from the carnivorous mushroom patch growing out of the hall radiator.

“Cecil?” he calls tentatively, “Are you here?”

He follows the answering series of sputters and thumps to the living room, where he finds Cecil struggling to sit up, hair wildly mussed, rubbing his eyes.

“Sorry,” he says, interrupting himself with a yawn. “It appears I fell asleep on the floor.”

Carlos helps him up onto the couch and places a hand on his forehead.

“Are you certain you're feeling okay?”

“Mmhm,” Cecil nods and settles firmly against his side. “Just a long day at work.”

Carlos begins to gently kneed at Cecil's shoulders, not expecting the low grunt he gets in return, half pleasure and half pain.

“Your back feels like a sack of rocks,” he marvels. “Here, lay back down.”

Cecil allows himself to be manhandled into position, putting up no resistance as Carlos begins digging fingers into the knotted muscles of his back.

“What in the world have you been doing to yourself?” Carlos asks incredulously. He'd definitely had his hands all over those shoulders not two days ago, sliding and grasping at them in a very different context.. They had been smooth and sinuous in their movements, nothing like they were now.

“Digging graves for the interns,” Cecil murmurs pleasantly into the couch cushions. “I had to do two this morning, and another three this afternoon. It's exhausting.”

Carlos stills. This was one answer he had not prepared for.

“You... had to dig graves today?” He manages, urging his hands back into motion.

“Ever since the station was bought – uuung, right there,” Cecil breathes happily, “The new management has been cutting costs. They refused to renew the contract with Vansten Funerary Services, but I can't just let the bodies pile up; it's just not right, plus it's against code. And it seems unfair to make the surviving interns do it. So I've been digging them myself. It's been pretty manageable, but between the passive-aggressive lighting storm this morning and Intern Mathius' spontaneous combination around lunch time, it was a busy day.”

“Is that why you've been in such good shape lately?”

He can feel Cecil's chuckle rumble through the couch, “Well, that, and I've had some other good workouts lately, too.”

Carlos swats at him, and leans down to place a kiss behind his ear.

“Your shirts fit me better now, too,” Cecil says after a comfortable silence.

“I'd noticed,” Carlos says. “I also noticed the blue-and-green plaid one is missing. Not that, I'm sure, you know anything about that.”

“Not a thing,” promises Cecil, sleepily.

*

The next day, just before the weather segment, Cecil describes the slow breakdown of Intern Petra into component chemical parts and reminds his listeners not to ingest, or touch, any food or medication that has passed its expiration date.

When he exits the sound booth at the end of the broadcast, Carlos is waiting for him, dressed for their rescheduled date, carrying a pair of work gloves and a shovel.

 

 

**V. Autonomic Nervous System**

If freshman-level biology courses had done anything for Carlos, it was to instill a nagging fear of demyelination, a doubt in the back of his mind that at any time the conduction of electrical impulses racing around his body could, in some way, become derailed and he would suddenly lose all ability to talk, or eat, or think, or otherwise continue as he had thus far into his life.

Every day in Night Vale, however, was a testament to his body's continued ability to function. His sympathetic nervous system made sure to run a complete diagnostic on fight-or-flight responses at least once a week, and he was quite certain that his adrenal glands were in perfect working order.

He did sometimes wonder if the same held true for Cecil, however. Between his blasé attitude to things that should have caused unrefined panic and his insistence that breathing was an optional indulgence, Carlos thought perhaps there might be something misfiring somewhere in that strange and beautiful body of his, sending all the wrong signals and reactions. Whether or not this was the case, though, Cecil seemed to manage just fine.

Despite this, there _were_ two things that were nearly guaranteed to send Cecil's blood pressure skyrocketing: his self-proclaimed nemesis, Steve Carlsberg, and the neighboring, rival town of Desert Bluffs. Any mention of either would throw him into an apoplectic fit until he was nearly foaming with rage.

It was unsurprising, then, that when they were cut off in a parking lot by a tan Corolla after a high school football game, Cecil began an aggressive stream of profanity that lasted the entire drive home.

He stalked through the apartment, throwing his coat to the floor, followed first by his shoes and then his socks, as he paced from room to room, Carlos trailing benignly and picking up the destruction in his wake.

“The nerve!” he shouted to nobody in particular, volume far more than adequate for the Sherif's Secret Police to hear through the closed windows. “Who does he think he is with that kind of defensive driving during a non-emergency scenario? And in a school zone, no less!”

He wrestled with his tie, hands clumsy and uncoordinated in his fervor. He quickly gave up on the task, growling as if it, too, had personally wronged him.

“And the Desert Bluffs marching band–!” he waved his arms wildly, which Carlos supposed should have been threatening, or unsettling, but was too charmingly absurd to register as a danger. “Their tubas should be taken away and melted into molten slag before recast as a monument to their utter ineptitude!”

Carlos slipped a finger into Cecil's belt loop, reeling him closer. It did nothing to stop the rant now in full swing, showing no sign of slowing. He began his own attempt at the necktie, pulled askew and half untucked from Cecil's shirt collar.

“I mean, I understand that not every student is a virtuoso performer, and that all of them suffer from being brought up in a horrific cesspool of mediocracy, but that is _no excuse_ for butchering – nay, _slaughtering_ – a state anthem _so thoroughly_ –”

He hummed his agreement against Cecil's throat, feeling blood hammering just below the skin as arms tightly circled his waist in response.

“–Not to mention their running back! Ugh, it's like, one shattered femur and he's rolling around on the ground like it's the end of the world–”

The tie, finally freed, landed unceremoniously on the coffee table. Carlos let his hands wander, tracing his lips and tongue across collarbones, feeling Cecil's hands beginning to fumble at his belt buckle.

“–It's football, you know? Like, don't play if you're not prepared for horrific physical trauma, right? I know that you are trying to distract me, Carlos, and I will let you know that my righteous indignation will not be tempered by your wiles–”

Carlos laughs as he lets himself be backed against the wall of the hallway. They've been through this before: Cecil too worked up about some aspect of community involvement to focus on anything except monologuing a vicious diatribe and Carlos trying to refocus that manic energy into physical contact. Carlos always wins. Or so he likes to say smugly afterwards, although they both know that Cecil isn't trying terribly hard to hold out.

For a few minutes Carlos lets Cecil take over, pulling at clothes and muttering semi-incoherently in between bruising kisses and just-the-better-side-of-gentle love bites. Carlos can tell the exact moment when the ramblings lose their vitriol and the tone gives way to possessive lust instead. He uses the opportunity to push Cecil roughly into the bedroom and against the mattress.

“I need you,” Carlos growls, taking Cecil tightly in hand.

Cecil grunts and bucks, saying, “I'm not going anywhere. And neither are you.”

Carlos grabs a fistful of hair and pulls him close, teeth skimming at his earlobe, voice hoarse and tight, “Never.”

On nights like this sex is an amalgamation of strange, sweet nothings and an aggressive struggle for dominance, an attempt to prove their own continued survival. There's no finesse or lightness in their touches, but these are always the times when the most vulnerable words spill out, unbidden.

They wrestle for control, sheets strewn wildly over the bed, tangling around their calves when they finally come, their bodies pressed tightly together and breath coming fast as they white-knuckle their way through orgasm.

Afterward, they sleep, quiet and peaceful.

They are skin and blood, bone and muscle, electricity and atoms. Somehow, all of these things have come together to form two bodies, and they have come together to form this: a tangle of limbs, gently bathed in the pale light from the fungus in the hall.

And, somehow, that is all that matters.

**Author's Note:**

> Any feedback of a general, specific or tonal nature is appreciated! I've no idea what I'm doing, but the Night Vale fandom has just been the best so far. Awww.
> 
> Also, I think emotions described as afflictions are fascinating. So, have a mini-playlist of songs that make mention of love's bone-shaking, breath-taking, blinding, painful, terrifying, bloody side-effects. It's my gift to you: <http://8tracks.com/nidor-and-petrichor/love-is-a-physical-affliction>


End file.
